"Now, why would someone lie under oath and especially on something that was so damaging to his case?" Nathaniel asked, looking expectantly to the two hundreds plus students sitting in front of him.
Almost twenty hands instantly rise in the air, Nathaniel points to a cute looking girl on the first row.
"He was paid to lie?"
"Statistically correct, money is one of the main reasons someone would lie on the stand. However, it's not really applicable to this case as there was no one to benefit from all of this. His congregation was dissolved even before the trial began, I'm sure some deep conspiracy theorist could say that he was a plan from the deep state to radicalize a part of Auburn population but I'm afraid we all are not high enough to even think of believing it." Nathaniel added with humor, his audience laughing at the joke.
"Someone else?" He asked, pointing at someone who was in the far back of the classroom.
"He was pressured by the Prosecutor into accepting a plea deal?"
"Astute observation, it's easy to forget sometimes the absurd amount of power that prosecutors hold before the trial starts and even when it's ongoing. Again, not applicable in this case because the prosecutor never offers a plea deal. He was content to go all the way and advocate for the harshest sentence. Anything else?"
Nathaniel watches the last people who had their hand raised, lowering them. Nathaniel had to smile seeing them think so much about it but not finding the answer. He waited for a few seconds before waving away the issue.
"We will go back to that later. Let's fast forward into the future shall we? To be more precise, four years into the future. Eric Owen and Clarissa Warton were going back home from a friend's house when their car was hit by a truck. The truck driver was found dead on site and Eric and Clarissa were heavily wounded. EMS brought them to the nearest hospital where they stayed on the operating table for more than twelve hours. The surgery went well but at the time where the doctors were feeling optimistics about their recovery, their state suddenly got worse."
Nathaniel made a quick break to look at everyone before continuing.
"Considering that the two of them start getting worse and they had the same symptom, the doctor leans toward an infectious disease or something more environnemental that they catch on the crash site or even before. Unfortunately, all tests came back negative but at this point the state of Eric and Clarissa had taken a turn for the worse. Eric needed to go back to surgery as a part of his bowel was necrosing and Clarissa had trouble breathing because of fluid in her lungs. Eric died on the operating table and Clarissa joined him two hours later from respiratory arrest. Like I told you earlier, this case is a sad story."
Nathaniel saw a girl with red hair raise her hand and nodded in her direction.
"I get that you try to give us the full story but it's this relevant to the case?" She asked.
"Of course, I would not waste your time otherwise. Everything is only a part of the puzzle that you must put at the right place for you to fit. Let's see some family photos now." Nathaniel said, leaning down on his laptop to show two photos side by side who were putting on front display the Owen and Warton family. "Does someone see something curious about these two pictures?" Nathaniel asked his audience.
At first, no one was understanding what he was asking as the two pictures could be easily found in every household in the US. They then decided to put more thought into it and Nathaniel heard wood creaking as every student leaned forward on their desk to see better. Even his professor looked at the two pictures with attention, trying to know where he was going with this. It was then that few students started to raise their hands in the air and Nathaniel pointed at the first who had seen something.
"I don't know if it's because of the picture but Clarissa seems to be lighter than both of her parents?" He answered prudently.
"Very good, she is." Nathaniel confirms. Even if both of her parents were also brown americans, Clarissa was lighter than them, it was subtle but it was there. "Anyone have something else?" He asked.
This time how long he waited, no one came forth with an answer. Sighing, he zoom on their head and approach the screen taking a ruler that was on the desk and point it at James Owen's face.
"Like you can see, James Owen had pale green eyes, the same eyes that he gave to Eric and his younger brother, Jonah." Nathaniel said moving the ruler to the two brothers to show his point before moving to the Warton family. "Now let's look at Kyron Warton, him and his wife had both brown eyes and still you can all see what color her eyes are."
"Pale green eyes." He heard his professor say who quickly added something seeing that he had been heard. "It proves nothing." He added more loudly.
"I agree, on his own it proves nothing. I will spare you the genetics talk about how you can or not inherit certain traits from your grandparents but I did my homework, none of her grandparents had green eyes, I even went back two generations into the past and none have eyes of that color prior to her. The odds of that happening are so close to none that it can be argued in court." Nathaniel explains, taking a break to let that sink in.
"Everything that happens was never about race, it was about hiding an horrible truth. It was the reason why James Owen choose to lie under oath, because of one of the strongest emotions." Nathaniel made another pause. "Shame."
"James Owen was the biological father of Clarissa Warton." He said gravely.
"I'm still not convinced and I'm still waiting for a proof." His professor said, almost cutting him off.
"I'm getting there professor. I went to see a doctor and asked him to look at the files of Eric and Clarissa with my theory. With that in mind, he realized that their illness was genetic. They both had a defective DNA that was preventing their bodies from making a critical protein. Hereditary Angioedema, this disease is so rare that they were obligated to have one parent who has it. This is why I went to see Eric's younger brother, Jonah and convince him to take the test. Like you can see, it was positive." Nathaniel said, showing the test result on screen.
"It's circunstancial evidence at best." His professor said.
"It's still better than what was used against him when he was convicted. In fact, if you take racism out of the equation, it's just a story about a father slapping his son for trying to run away from home. No jury would convict someone for that." Nathaniel answered before pointing at someone in the audience who had his hand raised.
"There is one thing I don't understand though. If it's a genetic disease, how come they never had symptoms before?"
"It's because not all genetic diseases manifest the same, some are active at birth but others can lay dormant in your body for decades. They can be triggered by stress or a trauma, like a car accident." Nathaniel explained.